Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.

Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.

Literature... is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself.

Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.

Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.

What we call ideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism

Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.